Incidence

Anesthesiologists estimate the incidence of air leakage with Supraglottic Airway Devices (SAD) being 5% – 10%. This is a high number! Next a systematic literature  review was conducted to verify the incidence of air leakage with SAD. This investigation has been done by the Mobile Anaesthesiology Service Holland Foundation.

One conclusion was that “the incidence found in the literature was between 5% and 52%. This wide range is caused by (1) numerous different factors that can cause air leakage (2) the definition of air leakage and (3) the method that was used to detect air leakage.”

This clearly confirmed the estimation of the interviewed anesthesiologists of an expected incidence of around 10%. In the target group of elderly it can go even up to 30%.